The Need to Acknowledge Our Own Brokenness, Our Need for a Savior

In October 2005 I started to notice a growth in my neck.  By November, it had continued to grow and I remember asking my sister, as she was finishing her residency program in Family Medicine, to examine it while we were driving back from Tennessee from our Thanksgiving break.  She could feel the growth, but without exams, she felt it was something that needed to be drained.  As I went from internal medicine; to a neck, throat, and ear specialist; they finally got me to a surgeon and then an oncologist. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  It was amazing how quickly we went from diagnosis to treatment.  It cancer had spread from my neck to my abdomen, which eventually led to 12 chemo treatments over 6 months. 

What is clear in medicine is also clear in the spiritual life.  We can't seek treatment, until we know what is wrong, or until we even identify that something is wrong!  That's the struggle with our culture today.  We are not willing to say something is wrong with ourselves.  Our culture, society will say everything is fine, everything is okay!  Yet, I only have to point to our political candidates to prove that statement as false!  Our culture, our society is not okay! We, ourselves need the Lord more then ever.

When I was on a college campus doing my missionary work, I encountered a student who encompasses exactly what we are facing today!  The college student was not Catholic, but was attending Catholic retreats.  He had been living the college life he wanted by partying hard on the weekends.  He had a girlfriend, was studying business, and had an internship all lined up for the summer.  I remember asking/challenging him to consider going deeper into the Catholic faith, but he knew what that would involve: change!  He flat out told me that his life was great and there was no need to change!  (Again, you can't seek the great physician if you don't know if anything is wrong).  That following week the Lord pierced through his false reality.  His girlfriend broke up with him, his internship fell through, and things were seeming to fall apart!  It was then, we were able to have deeper conversations, about loneliness, brokenness and the need for the Lord!

This weekend's Gospel is challenging us just like I had challenged that college student.  The Gospel was the contrast of  prayer between the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14).  The Pharisee relied solely on his works and felt justified by how he lived his live, while the tax collector knew he needed to rely solely on God.  The Lord is asking us to seek him and to rely solely on him!  Let us not be like the Pharisee, who couldn't not see his own brokenness and illness.  Let us be like the tax collector, acknowledge our need for a savior and call upon him; Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner!